First Comes Love

National Public Radio commentator Winik's memoir will appeal primarily to romantics who believe in the primacy of love and who can empathize with a woman whose husband in a rocky marriage committed suicide. More realistic types will wonder why Winik, although a heavy drug user at the time, allowed herself to be courted by a flamboyant homosexual junkie; she was subsequently to learn that he had been HIV-positive for two or three years before they met. They married in 1986 in Manhattan. Tony Heubach, a former ice-dancer, was a considerate person, although after the couple had two sons, his interest in heterosexual relations waned and the marriage began to unravel. His drug use increased sharply and, as his HIV turned into AIDS, his addiction became alarming: periods of catatonia alternated with prolonged sessions of weeping and, on a few occasions, assaults on his wife. With pain so acute and constant that even morphine was minimally effective, he requested her help to end his life. She prepared the bowl of strawberry-banana yogurt with 60 capsules of Nembutal that killed him in 1994. (Apr.)